Firefutz 3.0
So, I downloaded Firefox 3.0 yesterday, a week after their much-hyped download day since we were out of town and I didn’t trust the hotel’s LAN.
Now, everyone who anticipates I’m going to proclaim Firefox 3.0 the greatest thing since sliced bread (and TaB soda), and how using the internet will never be the same again, raise your hand.
Oh, stop it already, especially you over there with your finger in your nose. You know me better. You know I don’t like change, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m not terribly thrilled with Firefox 3.0.
I miss my cool themes, for one thing. I also miss about 60% of the add-ons I use on a daily basis. Oh, and I absolutely cannot stand that “Smart Locator Bar”. Fortunately, I figured out how to turn it off:
1. Type about:config into your address bar.
2. Assure Firefox you realize this might void your warranty.
3. Enter the following into the filter bar: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
4. When that result comes up, right-click on it and select “Modify”.
5. Change the value from the default 12 to -1.
6. Close the window.
7. Close and restart Firefox.
Sure, you’ll probably still have to look at the ugly default theme and the browser’s usability will continue sucking until the add-on authors write updates, but at least you won’t have to put up with that annoying drop-down menu on every single search form you use.
UPDATE: Oh, and the way Firefutz just crashed on me reminds me of another annoyance: despite having the option selected to restore my previous session next time I start the browser it doesn’t. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you’re in the habit of having, oh, forty-plus tabs open simultaneously it gets to be a big freaking pain in the ass. Fortunately, it’s Friday, and that means it’s almost martini o’clock, which even I know means that subsequent errors are most likely attributable to user stupidity.
*never tease someone who is dieting* *never tease someone who is dieting* *never tease...
I have to disagree with you on the Smart Locator Bar (Awesome Bar) – I think that’s excellent. Being able to locate a URL by the page name and by frequency of visit is brilliant.
I *am* a little disappointed by the occasional crashes, though :-/
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That bar drives me nuts. Perhaps it has to do with my intensive browser use: in any given day I spend over 8 hours online reading well over pages. I’ve also tweaked my FF to use the address bar to Twitter, and I use it for non-standard Google searches (definitions, currency and weight conversions, time zone lookups, etc.) repeatedly every day. Plus when I write entries on one of my blogs linking to another entry on one of my other blogs I use it to find the exact link I’m looking for.
In other words, my Smart Locator Bar quickly got so unwieldy that simply trying to type in an address directly became a major distraction.
And the crashes are driving me nuts!
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Being a linux user, I’ve been forced to use beta versions of this atrocity for a couple months now due to a flash 9 bug rendering FF2 unstable when viewing flash content. Smart Locator Bar is a pain in the arse that I have to admit I eventual came to find useful. The rest of the things I find an annoyance are the slow developmental updates to my favorite extensions such as TabMixPlus.
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I’m waiting for a few things to be updated or ‘fixed’ before I’m putting it on any of the machines at work or my main machine.
Luckily I only downloaded it on my laptop, which pretty much rendered writing posts in my wordpress useless (see my bitch on my site), and like you, desperately miss half my add-ons.
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Look for the ScribeFire extension for posting to WordPress. It works better than WordPress’s editor and they no longer force you to advertise that you’ve created your post with it. One thing you’ll want to do when you and if you install it is go to the options for it and disable the “QuickBlogging Toolbar.” It’s an annoyance beyond all belief as if left enabled it will flash on and off a blogging toolbar as you visit news and blog sites.
Thanks for the recommendation chelle, but I downloaded windows live writer last week, and I’ve been using that ever since. MS product, but surprisingly nifty. Even gives me the ability to put a variety of borders around photos I upload, and I can swap and change between blogs.
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Bleh. I swore off Firefox after its previous edition successfully and completely crashed my computer… when Firefox was not even running. After that, no more.
Does not sound like a lot has changed
.
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I haven’t updated yet. And won’t until all the bugs are worked out. I used to use Firefox exclusively because tabs were available.
Hate to admit it, but I now use IE most of the time. Both crash on me, but IE loads so much faster.
I’m a luddite in some ways. I upgrade SLOWLY. If upgrades weren’t forced on me, I’d probably still be using Windows 3.1
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@Kate:
A better way to rid yourself of the Smart bar features is to download two add-ons: Hide Unvisited and Old Location Bar. As for the crashes, am surprised. By crash, do you mean your whole PC or FF?
@Linoge:
Um, no way a program can “…successfully and completely crash…” your PC if the app isn’t running.
@Donna B.
The primary reason any app crashes a PC is a non-standard configuration. I work with several varieties of PC (at varying levels of complex configuration) and have never seen an app consistently crash that wasn’t related to something else (that is, any program would have crashed). Usually, there is a bad sector on the HD or the memory is starting to go.
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It’s the browser crashing, Steve. But it’s happening often enough that it’s driving me nuts.
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Firefox 3 crashes for me (just Firefox) fairly often too — less often than the beta did, but at least once a day. I always manage to get my session back though.
If FF3 were crashing my computer altogether, I’d either be back to 2.0.0.623705438568 or whatever the previous version was, or I would have gone over entirely to using Opera.
I just reverted back to Firefox 2.whatever following these instructions.
Soooo much better now.
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Can’t remember my Linux version ever crashing. At first the drop down annoyed me but have gotten used to it. Glad I moved to Kubuntu and stripped Microsoft XP off my system
Steve, considering the age (and my general abuse)of the computer I use most of the time, memory or HD or just about anything may be ready to go.
As with my cars, I’ll use it until then. No telling what new innovations will come out in the 6 months to a year that this one may last.
That reminds me, it’s time for a data backup!
Donna B.s last blog post..2nd Amendment Really Is About An Individual Right
I installed it, but it didn’t even start. The task would show up in the task manager and then it crashed prior to bringing up a window. I assumed it was due to some addon incompatibility. Glad to hear I’m not missing out on anything important.
I simply will not use any browser without the functions of ad block, no script and session saver. It’s not safe and it’s not fun.
i’ve been using Firefox forever and have really enjoyed using it instead of the dreaded IE. i downloaded and installed 3 and discovered, to my dismay, that most of the extensions i use frequently were not compatible. also it crashed repeatedly.
#1 son has been an Opera user for some time and has been ragging me to give it a shot. i used Opera back in v3 or 4 days and thought it was a pretty good browser so i downloaded v 9.5 and i like it fine.
it has some quirks that i’m not real fond of but it doesn’t crash on the most benign sites and i like the fairly small footprint.
methinks Firefox has really blown it with v3.
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The answer is simple:
Opera 9.5.
Opera will restore your exact browser session (to within a minute or so of your last action). Most of the stuff you do in FF with add-ons, Opera has installed already, and they have a very robust community for new widgets (add-ons). Also, Skins. Lots of skins. But the old Opera 7 skin is still the best — when you d/l 9.5, trust me, the skin will look ugly, but you just have to find one you like.
Plus, Opera 9.5 is backward compatible with almost everything in the previous versions.
And when it comes to opening multiple tabs at a time, it’s as fast as FF.
This is not a paid post. I really am saying all this because Opera is my browser of choice. I don’t even have Firefox on my home computer, and I only have it at work because I have to do cross-browser compatibility tests.
And hey, if you don’t like Opera, you could always get Safari for PC. It’s not bad.
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At the moment, I have mixed feelings about the latest Firefox. I’m running it on 3 different computers, with different experiences on each system. When this browser works, it does a great job. I can run a gazillion tabs without it slowing down. But when it dies … it makes me think that the acronym, FF3, really stands for F’ing FireFox.
So far, on one computer, I had to reinstall after FF3 after it crashed and destroyed my browser profile. On another computer, Firefox has been randomly crashing and I have yet to identify why. On my laptop, Firefox is working fine (so far). But I don’t have the warm fuzzy feeling that I can trust it to continue.
Of course, when has a new version of any program worked as it should?
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Thanks, Kate. The Smart Bar was driving me NUTS!! Other than that, I’m liking FF3. For the time being, anyway.